Not the Best Way to Reset U.S.-Russian Ties

If there were any doubts as to how fragile relations remain between the United States and Russia, the donnybrook over U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s interview with The Wall Street Journal last week laid them to rest. When Biden suggested that Russian economic distress would give Washington a way to extract concessions from Moscow, the Russian reaction was as immediate as it was negative. President Dmitry Medvedev’s foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko said, “If some members of [U.S. President Barack] Obama’s team and government … disagree with the policy of their own president, we ought to know it.” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, interpreted Biden’s words as an attempt to return to the cool — if not tense — relationship during the George W. Bush years and expressed hope that the White House would stand by the commitment to constructive partnership that Medvedev and Obama articulated during the July summit in Moscow.